The present invention generally relates to a gas filling apparatus which will automatically fill gas into an inflatable life-saving equipment when it is submerged in water, and more particularly to an improved automatic actuation device for inflatable life-saving equipment which can be easily attached to a conventional manual gas filling apparatus so that the conventional manual inflatable life-saving equipment will immediately become an automatic operation when submerged in water.
Previously, many types of the water-soluble solid material have been proposed in the gas filling apparatus, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,815,783 by Hirata and described in U.K. Pat. No. 1,198,867 by Fujimoto. Both of them have many defects.
Hirata discloses an automatic gas filling device which mainly comprises a U-shaped housing for mounting a gas cartridge 8 and an automatic actuation machanism 33 wherein a seesaw type driving lever 22 is particularly required in addition to a manual operating lever 25. This not only makes the construction complicated also increases the mechanic interferences. Once the fulcurm 23 is struck, the driving lever 22 would be out of work and paralyze the automatic and manual operation, even it is not so, it would be harder to pull the manual lever 25 when manual operation is needed in emergency.
Due to the above reason, the construction of gas filling apparatus of Hirata's patent at least includes a gas cartridge 8 with its holder (including a piercing pin 13) and a manual lever 25 with its pivot 24 on the second chamber which cannot be replaced with parts of the conventional, so its adaptability is greatly limited. In addition, the automatic actuation mechanism 33 on the second chamber is complicated and its reliability in operation is doubtful. The reason is that the mechanism 33 includes a capsule 46, a slide 45 with a stem 47, a wet restricting member 38, a bar 37, an actuation spring and a spring receiving member 38, in which the bar 37 is inserted in the locking hole 42 on the middle of spring receiving member 36, bifurcations 40 and 41 of the spring receiving member 36 are firmly held by member 38. In operation, if the action force of the actuation spring 35 is not big enough would not push the br 37 out of the member 38, because the lower end of the bifurcations 40 and 41 would bend outwardly, see FIG. 10. The decay problem and material selection for members 36 and 38 and spring 35 are concerned with the problem of complex and life-saving effectiveness. So if one of them changes would make the automatic gas filling function decreased or out of work.
As to Fujimoto's patent, he teaches a simpler construction for automatic gas filling device, but the gas cylinder 13 and seal cutter 12 should be installed together with specific designed casing 1. The restricting member 7 cannot be readily replaced with the conventional life-saving equipment, its adaptability is also limited and cannot be reused. Further, no matter it is adopted the type of sliding seal cutter 12 (see FIGS. 1, 10 and 11) or the type of sliding gas cylinder 13 (see FIGS. 3, 4, 7A and 9), to isolatedly separate the water chamber in casing 1 from the gas chamber is absolutely needed, it should adopt O-rings 11, 31 or packing 28, thus such seal parts and sliding members 9, 29, 46 will cause a great deal of friction force with the inside wall of casing 1, making the smoothness of sliding movement in cutting seal cap impossible.
Therefore, to overcome the above-mentioned problems, it needs not only to increase the expansion force of actuation spring, also to enforce the tensile strength of restricting members 7, 32, 37, 45 to withstand the expanding force of the spring under a dry condition. In this manner, the operating time of the restricting member, when submerged in water, will be much longer which will delay the gas filling operation, make the automatic life-saving equipment meaningless.
Accordingly, the present invention is to provide an automatic actuation device to fill the gas into life-saving equipment immediately when it is submerged in water.
An object of the present invention is to provide an improved automatic actuation device for life-saving equipment which will immediately open a gas cylinder by the operation of an automatic actuation device to fill the gas contained in the gas cylinder into an inflatable life-saving equipment at very short time when submerged in water.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an automatic actuation device for life-saving equipment which can be easily fitted to the conventional manual gas filling apparatus wherein the gas filling apparatus once submerged in water can be easily reset for repeated use by replacing its used water-soluble paper coil unit with a new one in the most economic condition.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an improved automatic actuation device which can be easily adapted to and removed from any kind of gas filling apparatus of the conventional life-saving equipment by hand operation without any need of tool.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide an improved automatic actuation device in which the whole water-soluble paper coil unit is encompassed with a water-proof film to prevent paper coil unit from being broken when accidentally contacted with moisture in the air.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide an improved automatic actuation device for life-saving equipment in which a water-proof pocket means is further provided on the whole device to prevent the water-soluble paper coil unit from being wet in rainy day caused unnecessary operation.
A still further object of the present invention is to provide an improved life-saving equipment which can be also used only as a manually operated apparatus by removing the automatic actuation device from the equipment and is adapted for swimming and diving.